This past week I went on a two hour walking tour of Oxford. I had never been to Oxford, and anytime I am in a new city I find walking tours a good way to get started. The tour included a bit of history of the area and a few of the highlights. I will admit though, to being that person, you know, the one who is a few steps away from the group taking photos. While on the tour, I got this photo:

ISO 500 50mm f/8.0 1/100

I love this idea of nature growing right into a man-made structure, although I suspect in this case it has had some encouragement to grow that way. I edited the photo into this:

ISO 500 50mm f/8.0 1/100

A little more dramatic, I’ve used a few filters to make it feel like not only is it against the odds that the tree would be there but that it is amazing that the photo even still exists given it distressed state.

When I was editing the first thing I did was crop the photo. Mostly to take out the bit of the sky in the left corner and some of the fencing in the lower left. For the fencing in the lower right I used the healing brush tool in Photoshop to remove that. I’ve then used the plug-in Analog Efex Pro to create the photographic look of the final version. I’ve used some blur and an uneven border to make the photo look worn and damaged. The nice thing about the plug-in that it gives you a good place to start with creating looks like this. It’s then up to you how to further interpret it, more blur? less? it’s all pretty easy to manage within the plug-in.

What do you think of my final version? I’ve included the link to the walking tour I took, it was a good one, I would recommend it; do you ever take walking tours of places you are visiting? Feel free to leave a comment below.